The merger, announced yesterday, of the Bank of New York and Mellon Financial Corporation is a win for New York in that the new company, to be called The Bank of New York Mellon Corporation, will be headquartered in New York City. It is the Bank of New York, not Pittsburgh-based Mellon, that will have a majority on the board of the new mega-bank. Still unclear is which city will bear the brunt of the 3,900 job losses that the companies say will result from the merger. Others will have more to say about what the merger means for the financial industry and the regional economy. But one aspect of the merger that struck us as just nifty is the way the merger unites the banks associated with two of the greatest treasury secretaries in American history.

The Bank of New York’s Web site notes that Alexander Hamilton wrote the Bank of New York’s constitution in 1784, becoming “the individual most actively involved in the organization of The Bank of New York, guiding it through its early stages, and leaving a lasting imprint on The Bank’s philosophy.” Hamilton was America’s first Treasury secretary, serving America’s founding president, George Washington, well. His role in having the federal government take over the debts incurred by the states in the American Revolution was one of the decisions that enabled the accession of our federal government, and he laid the groundwork for a strong central federal government and financial system.

The name of the Mellon Financial Corporation draws from Andrew W. Mellon, who was its president between 1882 and 1921. As Amity Shlaes wrote in this newspaper on October 2 in reviewing David Cannadine’s “Mellon: An American Life,” “Mellon the Treasury Secretary outclassed all predecessors but Alexander Hamilton, spending a full decade in the job and presiding over stupendous economic progress.” Mellon, who served as Treasury secretary between 1921 and 1932, sharply lowered marginal income tax rates and gave America the National Gallery of Art. One could say he was a supply-side visionary who understood the Laffer curve (i.e., classical economics) even before Arthur Laffer.

America is a country where vast fortunes are being made in industries — hedge funds, computers, biotechnology — that did not even exist 100 years ago. What impresses us about this latest merger is that it marshals today’s top investment bankers and lawyers and market capital — $44 billion of it, if you look at the combined market capitalization of the two banks — to combine what in the end amounts to, to a large degree, institutions shaped by the strong personalities of two individual Americans. They served their government well but also devoted themselves to creating private capitalist institutions that endure and evolve to this day. A daring New Yorker, Hamilton was inspired in large part by what he learned from a city whose combination of commerce and ideals were evident even before the American states were united.